Take Out (10 page)

Busy with her parrot, Mrs Hardegan seemed not the least bit concerned about Skye’s dilemma about who to leave on the contact list. After filling up the seed bowl, she replenished the bird’s water supply, using a jug with a long spout. Skye assessed the way she carried out these tasks, noting how barely a seed or drop of water was spilled. The old lady’s fine-motor skills were improving daily, she noted with satisfaction.

‘Our good boy, our little feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan muttered to herself as she put the feeding paraphernalia back in the drawer of a heavy oak sideboard at the far side of the room. ‘We are the same age as the feathered one. We were given him by a sea captain when we were just a boy.’

‘I know, and he’s very beautiful,’ Skye said; she’d never seen anything more endearingly ugly in her life. The old lady seemed a lot fonder of Captain Flint than she had ever been of her son. But Skye could hardly list a parrot as the emergency contact.

‘Is there anyone else we can put on your list, Mrs H?’

‘Liar. Not beautiful, ugly as sin.’ Mrs Hardegan must have noticed the exasperation on Skye’s face and answered her question with a shrug of her bony shoulders before shuffling back to her chair by the window. Still saying nothing, she pointed to the Pavels’ house.

‘I know, it’s a shame they’ve gone,’ Skye said. ‘They could have gone on the list. They were good neighbours to you, weren’t they?’

‘Used to be. Not now.’

‘Well ... no, not now.’ Stevie had rung Skye the previous night and told her about the discovery of the body in the river, which she said more than likely belonged to Delia Pavel. Although Mrs Hardegan hadn’t mentioned it, she couldn’t have missed it; it had been all over the TV news. The news didn’t seem to have affected her. She sat as she usually did, rigid in her chair, hands clasped, buttoned tight as a pair of winter combinations, as Skye’s gran would’ve said. When she was dying in hospital, Gran had said how strange it was to be old and sick on the outside, yet still feel twenty-one on the inside. Mrs Hardegan was very much like her gran, Skye decided.

‘The boy told us all about the snoodle pinkerds. Now we know. We know what happened,’ Mrs Hardegan said in her no nonsense, matter-of-fact tone.

Snoodle pinkerds. Skye hadn’t heard her use that term since the early days of the stroke. She wondered what it meant, but was reluctant to bombard the woman with questions that might only lead to more frustration. For that same reason, she didn’t want to raise the distressful topic of Delia Pavel just before the weekend when there wouldn’t be anyone around to keep an eye on her.

On the phone Stevie had mentioned getting together for a meeting with Mrs Hardegan and Luke Fowler on Monday. Hopefully, between the three of them, they’d be able to work out what she was talking about. It surprised Skye that Luke Fowler had agreed to this. She certainly wasn’t looking forward to dealing with him again, and was sure he felt the same. They reminded each other of things they’d both rather forget.

Still poised over the empty emergency contact list, she nibbled the top of her pen and worried about the coming meeting—he’d hardly say or try anything stupid with Stevie standing as a buffer between them, would he? Skye didn’t usually care what anyone said or thought about her, but her ‘holiday job’ was one thing she didn’t care to broadcast, especially to Stevie. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want her friend to find out—it wasn’t like Stevie was ‘conservative country’, like her folks. Even though she knew Stevie was not judgemental, she worried that knowledge of her past might diminish her value in Stevie’s eyes. Their friendship wasn’t worth the risk.

‘Have you any plans for the weekend, Mrs H?’ she asked, putting the pen, Mrs H’s notes and her disturbing thoughts away.

Mrs Hardegan pointed to her cross-stitch, then to the TV.

‘Don’t just point Mrs H; you’ve got to practise your talking. That’s what the speech therapist said, isn’t it?’

‘Tripe, the boy talked utter tripe, getting us to look at all those stupid picture cards. We know what a teapot is, we know a car when we see one, an apple with an
aaaaaa
—we’re not at kindergarten.’

‘I hope you weren’t rude to her.’

‘No. We just told him to fuck off.’

Skye grinned back. ‘Bet you didn’t.’ She picked up the TV guide and slowly read the weekend TV listings aloud. She could sense the old lady taking it all in, committing her weekend viewing schedule to memory. Mrs H could no longer understand numbers, so Skye had stuck small coloured dots on the TV remote to signify the channels. Next, she took the coloured wool Mrs Hardegan pointed to, and threaded enough needles to last the weekend. The tapestry was a laborious task, something Mrs H had taken up after the stroke when the screen-printing had proved too messy.

‘I’m going to visit my folks. They live on a farm near Wyalkatchem,’ Skye told her as she finished the threading.

‘Lucky parents to have a boy like you. Better than our cowardly waster.’

‘I don’t think my parents would agree if they knew what I’d been up to a few years ago.’ Skye got up from the footstool. ‘Anyway, I’d better get going if I want to miss the city traffic.’

But she was too late to miss the evening traffic. Skye rang her mother from her car to say she’d be late and not to hold dinner for her. In the evenings the corner store often cooked fresh Asian dishes to go. She’d had them with Mrs Hardegan before and they were always delicious. She’d get a container and eat in the car on the way to the farm.

Heading to the deli, she tried again to make sense of Mrs Hardegan’s words:
The boy told me all about the snoodle pinkerds. Now we know, we know what happened.
There was something there, she knew it, something she’d failed to grasp. Ralph Hardegan had disappeared, supposedly on business, and the Pavels, or at least one of them, had been murdered. There had to be a connection between the three of them—but what?

She started to call Stevie on her mobile, then decided against it. Monty was having his operation tomorrow and Stevie would probably be sitting with him in the hospital while he went through the last minute preparations for surgery. Even if she did get through on the phone, she doubted her friend would be in the right frame of mind to listen. Never mind, maybe she could work it out for herself while she was up at the farm. God knows there wasn’t much else to think about in that barren, sand-blasted place.

She ordered the nasi goreng, a fully-leaded Coke and a packet of smokes she’d have to hide from her mother. In her head she heard her mother say, ‘Still smoking, and with your asthma as bad as it is? Skye, you must have a death wish.’ She smiled to herself. If her mother knew what else her little girl had been up to since she left home, she’d probably be overjoyed at the insignificance of her one remaining vice.

Skye stepped from the shop onto the footpath, thinking again about what Mrs H had told her. Maybe she should call Stevie. It was an intriguing mystery and she might appreciate the diversion after all. Putting her purchases on the roof of her car, she reached into her uniform pocket for her phone. Predictably, Stevie’s phone was switched off so she left a voice message. ‘Hi Stevie, it’s me. Hope all’s going well with Monty, give him my love and luck. Listen ... I’ve just had another talk with Mrs Hardegan. There seems to be some kind of a connection between her son and the Pavels, and I think you should know that Ralph, the son, has also gone missing. I thought you might like to mention it to Luke Fowler, now that you’re so palsy walsy with him. I’m spending the weekend with my folks in Wyalkatchem. Give me a ring on their landline if you can, there’s no mobile reception up their way.’ She rattled off her parents’ number. ‘Ciao for now, see you Monday at one...’

Skye made herself comfortable in her white Hyundai, the radio on Triple J, the tray of nasi goreng safely wedged on the front seat between her bag and an old towel positioned to catch any dropped rice. She cracked the Coke as she pulled into the street, cutting off a shiny posh car about to pull out behind her. The driver didn’t so much as offer a finger or even a honk of annoyance. What a suburb, she thought with disgust: leafy green verges, proximity to river and ocean, palatial mansions, graffiti free bus stops—who in hell would want to live here? It was almost as dull as Wylie.

With the traffic and the silky grey of the city far behind now, Skye entered the other world of country driving. The clouds, if they’d been here at all, were gone, the night sky clear and star-sprinkled, the road long, straight and mind-numbingly boring. With no decent radio reception she turned to her iPod and slapped her thigh to John Butler, agreeing with his political rants, laughing out loud at the crazy irreverence of Tim Minchin.

It looked like someone was tailgating again—it had been happening off and on since she’d left the city. Once more she caught the dazzle of headlights in the rear view mirror. If she continued the journey like this, she thought, she’d end up blind. She scrunched her eyes, wound down the window and flipped him the bird:
get lost, tosser.
He probably wouldn’t even see the gesture, but it made her feel better.

She slowed and veered into a truck stop, expecting to see the impatient vehicle zoom past. To her dismay it slowed too, so close on her tail she could hear the gravel pinging on the undercarriage.

No way was she going to hang around here to find out what this creep wanted. Flooring the accelerator she shot a spray of gravel at his windscreen and fishtailed toward the exit, hammering her way back onto the open road.

Her relief was short-lived. Two silver-blue eyes dazzled in the rear vision window and the car closed in once more. The roar of its engine told her it was a helluva lot more powerful than her little Hyundai; she’d never be able to out-drive it here on the open road.

Her mouth went dry; she swallowed painfully. Was she being road-raged? She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles glowed and wondered what the hell she’d done to deserve this.

Her gran would’ve said her sins were catching up with her at last.

She tried to work out where she was on the road and if she knew anyone in the vicinity. The farms here were wide and isolated. Every few kilometres there might be an entrance, but the driveways were often several kilometres long. Turning down one of these was no option; the car following her had shown in the truck stop that it could stick to the gravel a lot better than she could.

The police, she must phone the police, they would intercept this prick and give him the what for. She scrabbled for the phone on the passenger seat, panicked when she couldn’t find it. The skidding and pitching on the gravel at the truck stop must have knocked it off. Then, after some frantic searching, she spotted it peeping out from under the empty food carton at the far corner of the floor.

She drove now at breakneck speed, struggling to keep the car on the road while she stretched for the phone. Finally her fingers closed around it and she straightened behind the wheel seeing no sign of the tormenting headlights. Lost him—
Yessssssss.

Her jubilation evaporated into the stifling air of her car as the sinister, streamlined vehicle pulled out of her blind spot. This time she recognised it as the wanky car she’d cut off outside the deli.

What a jerk. He must really have a hair up his arse to follow her all this way. But knowledge didn’t make the situation any easier to take. People had been killed in road-rage attacks.

She grabbed the phone, fingers jabbing at the keys. No service.
Shit!
But if she was lucky, the emergency numbers might still work. She risked a glance at the adjacent car as she punched 000 and saw the shadowy figure of a man behind the wheel.

Fuck, fuck, fuck
—still no service. With a yell of abuse she hurled the phone onto the passenger seat.

Should she slow down, confront him, what should she do? If she continued at this speed she’d surely end up wrapped around a tree.

The driver buzzed his window open. A pale hand flapped, indicating her to slow down.

No way, José.

She caught a green face shimmering in the light from the dash and felt the air leave her lungs with a whoosh.

She knew that face.

Oh God. It’s you.

Fear grabbed her like a python’s coil around the chest. When she breathed out, the coils tightened. It was a familiar, horrible feeling. With asthma, she knew, if you try to fight it, you only make it worse. She tried to stay calm, lifted her foot a fraction off the accelerator and slowed down a little. The other car slowed too. Now it was only a few centimetres from her door. It gave her car the smallest of nudges, not much more than a scrape, but it was enough to do the trick. She panicked and swerved to the left, just missed a tree and attempted to straighten. Then her oxygen-starved brain overcompensated and she veered into the centre of the road. (Image 8.1)

‘I’d kiss you only I’ve just washed my hair,’ Monty slurred around the ET tube. Well, that’s what it sounded like, Stevie thought as she reached for his hand among the morass of lines. She didn’t ask him to repeat it; doped to the eyeballs he immediately fell back into a deep sleep.